Recently I've had some time to spare, so I decided to refactor my Backlog Manager into a new version.

Here it is: Backlog Manager v10.1

It is more robust than the previous versions, and has better support for Release Planning.

As agile projects work better and better, an increasingly commonproblem is not the project itself, but the surrounding culture andmanagement structures.To realise business benefit in super speed you need to rebuild theorganisation around the projects. It is one thing to deliver a single successful agile project but quiteanother to change the culture and organization around the project toensure successful agile processes are repeatable long term.

SnapABug, a tool that allows you to embed a screen capture help widget on your site, has taken advantage of the recently released new version of the Pivotal Tracker API (V3) to improve the integration between SnapABug and Pivotal Tracker. SnapABug can now automatically upload web page snapshots as Tracker story file attachments.

Read more about this feature and other improvements here.

Steve Berczuk has a lovely discussion of Manage Your Project Portfolio. You can see his review here.

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It is perhaps a myth, but an enduring one, that people and their pets resemble one another. The same has been said of products and the teams that build them. If it is true that a product reflects the structure of the team that built it, then an important decision for any Scrum project is how to organize individuals into teams. This paper presents a set of guidelines to consider in designing an appropriate team structure. Each guideline is presented in the form of a question to be asked of a current or proposed team. The questions are intended to be asked iteratively. Ask each question of a current or proposed team, changing the structure as appropriate based on the answer. As the structure changes, re-ask the questions until you can answer “yes” to each.

1. Does the structure accentuate the strengths, shore up the weaknesses, and support the motivations of the team members? People don’t enjoy being on a team where they are not able to make use of their strengths or are constantly required to do things they are bad at. Good team members are willing to do whatever is necessary for the success of the project, but that doesn’t relieve us from the goal of trying to find a team structure that accentuates the strengths of as many team members as possible.
2. Does the structure minimize the number of people required to be on two teams (and avoid having anyone on three)? A well-conceived team structure for an organization that is not attempting to do too many concurrent projects will reduce multitasking to a tolerable level. If more than 20% of all team members belong to more than one team, consider an alternative team design or deferring some projects.
3. Does the structure maximize the amount of time that teams will remain together?
   If other factors are equal, you should favor a design that allows team membership to persist over a longer period. It takes time for individuals to learn to work well together. Amortize the cost of that learning over a longer period by trying to leave teams together as long as possible.
4. Are component teams used only in limited and easily justifiable cases? Most teams should be created around the end-to-end delivery of working features. In some cases, it is acceptable to have a component team developing reusable user interface components, providing access to a database, or similar functionality. But these should be exceptions.
5. Will you be able to feed most teams with two pizzas? Given the compelling productivity and quality advantages of small teams, the majority of teams in a good design should have five to nine members.
6. Does the structure minimize the number of communication paths between teams? A poor team structure design will result in a seemingly infinite number of communication paths between teams. Teams will find themselves unable to complete any work without coordinating first with too many other teams. Some inter-team coordination will always be required. But, if a team that wants to add a new field on a form is required to coordinate that effort with three other teams, as I’ve seen, then the communication overhead is too high.
7. Does the structure encourage teams to communicate who wouldn’t otherwise do so? Some teams will just naturally communicate with each other. An effective team design encourages communication among teams or individuals who should communicate but may not do so on their own accord. In fact, one valid reason to put someone on two teams is that doing so will increase the communication between those teams. If lack of communication between two teams is a concern, splitting a person’s time between those two teams is easily justified.
8. Does the design support a clear understanding of accountability? A well-designed team structure will reinforce the concept of a shared, all-teams accountability for the overall success of the project while providing each team with clear indicators of their unique accountabilities.
9. Did team members have input into the design of the team? During the early stages of your transition to Scrum, this may not be possible. Individuals may not yet have enough experience delivering working, tested, ready-to-use products by the end of each sprint. Similarly, some individuals may be initially too resistant to Scrum to contribute to team structure discussions in constructive ways. In these cases, it is acceptable for managers outside the team to design an initial team structure.

An effective team structure is one of the most critical factors in the success of any agile endeavor. Poorly structured teams will lead to inefficient teamwork, excessive integration challenges, multitasking, low morale and other problems. By using these nine questions to carefully consider how teams are organized you can avoid these problems.

Du hast Lust zu Reisen, ständig neue Teams kennen zu lernen, in einer weltweit bekannten Scrum Consulting Organisation State-of-the-Art-Scrum zu praktizieren und damit die Teams unserer Kunden erfolgreich zu machen?

Wir suchen dich, wenn du

• einen Hochschulabschluss in den Geisteswissenschaften oder Informatik hast,
• bis zwei Jahre Berufserfahrung hast, oder einen Doktor mitbringst,
• sehr gu Read more ...

Anders Storm, Head of Development and IT at Tekis AB, posted a cogent reminder of all that's good about Scrum (see Anders' post Why I Like Scrum! on his blog Product...

At times, wildly informative.

Heute begann das Scrum Gathering in Orlando, Florida. Den Anfang machte Jeff Sutherland mit Ken Johnson und sie sprachen über Scrum and CMMi. Eigentlich schade, dass wieder eine Keynote auf einem ScrumGathering für den Vergleich von Scrum mit CMMi genutzt wird. Andererseits hatte ich mal wieder Recht: Ich schreibe seit Jahren darüber, dass diese beiden Themen zusammen gehören.

Aber … ich glaube, dass das Scrum Gathering andere Read more ...

As nobody probably missed, my trust in Lotus Notes is below the freezing point. The quality is so low, the usability is a sad story and having used Outlook with Exchange, the lack of basic functionality in e-mail and calendar functionality amazes me. I shouldn’t be surprised anymore, but still….   Lotus Notes has two passwords, one for the Windows client and one for the web client. Today, I wanted to change the password for the web client. I looked in the horror story of Lotus Notes preferences and found nothing. Finally, I looked in the help section and I couldn’t believe my eyes. This is how you do it:  

To change your Internet password manually, enter the URL for a Web application and add “?changepassword” after the database name at the end of the URL. For example, http://serverName.acme.com/databasename.nsf?changepassword.

In the Change Password screen, enter your old Internet password, enter a new Internet password, and then confirm your new Internet password by entering it again in the corresponding fields. The password quality guidelines are the same as the Lotus Notes password guidelines.

Click Submit.

Are they crazy? I couldn’t find that you could change the settings using the Windows client, perhaps you can, but in that case the help section does not include the correct information which is really bad. But I don’t know if that is worse than leaving the suggested solution the only one for us poor Lotus Notes users.    

We've added Zendesk to the list of applications that Tracker integrates with. Zendesk is a "beautifully simple", on demand customer support help desk system. This integration allows your development team to prioritize and collaborate around Zendesk tickets as linked Tracker stories, bringing development and support closer together in your organization.

To learn how to set up Zendesk integration for your project, visit the integrations help page. Once enabled, you'll see a new panel in your project, allowing you to see and drag/drop Zendek tickets into the backlog or icebox. Story comments and state changes will appear in the corresponding Zendesk ticket as comments.

Note: At the moment, the Pivotal Tracker target in Zendesk does not create linked stories in Tracker. We're working with Zendesk to enable that, and make the two integrations seamless.

Although we’re nearly done with Q1 2010 I thought it was high time to share with our clients and the world the very exciting new journey we have started this year with some changes to the team, vision and structure of Enthiosys.

Team: Having worked with me since 2004, first as a consultant, then as President of Enthiosys, starting in 2006, Scott Gilbert has been invaluable in growing Enthiosys into the leading Agile Product Management Consulting firm it is today.  After years of helping other companies and teams understand and succeed with Agile, he is going back into a senior product management role where he can practice what he’s been preaching, test out new ideas and move the Agile PM tribe forward.  This fits with the Enthiosys’ core value of being able to speak from experience, not just quote ideas and theories created by others.

Rich Mironov also excelled during his tenure as CMO for the firm. Rich was instrumental in honing our service offerings into a cohesive and coordinated set of engagements, improving our messaging, and providing terrific services to our clients. Rich is returning to his solo consulting practice, where he’ll continue to write Product Bytes, champion agile product management causes and work with Enthiosys on selected projects. On a personal note, I was proud to have Enthiosys sponsor the production and publication of Rich’s book The Art of Product Management. Rich continues to provide product management leadership for the upcoming Product Camp Silicon Valley and the product management stage at Agile 2010 – both of which were started and nurtured through Enthiosys. It is especially gratifying to see the amazing and rapid growth of Product Camps around the world.

I sincerely thank Scott and Rich for all of the help they have provided me and the firm during their time with the company and I wish them both the best in their future endeavors.

I welcome Jason Tanner to the staff as President. Jason spent part of 2008 and all of 2009 in the field serving two of our largest customers helping them transition to Agile practices. Jason lived the transition from a ‘traditional’ product manager to an Agile Product Manager and has leveraged his experiences into quality service to our clients. Jason has embraced Innovation Games® in creative ways to increase collaboration for clients and other groups from the Product Camp RTP to the DFW Scrum Users Group.

Vision: While we will maintain a focus on Agile Product Management, this year we plan to expand our scope to Agile product delivery. In 2009, our customers asked us for more than product management consulting. They desired more complete services to build and start exceptional teams with great product managers and terrific coaches. They asked for assistance with development and testing practices with longer time horizons for continuous improvement. As a result, we broadened our network of senior consultants to provide a targeted combination of services to delight our customers. This subtle and important evolution will continue this year. Our offerings will grow with a new selection of services, training courses and content to address customer needs. You should also expect to see us continue to leverage our partners to increase our ability to deliver a full suite of services. Our vision also include increasing the emphasis on our training offerings.

Structure: We launched online Innovation Games® last year and grew the games team to continue enhancing the platform while increasing adoption of the games. Along the way, we started to notice that our clients and other consultants were using the games to solve a variety of serious problems in areas of sales management & execution and corporate strategy—in themselves novel and exciting uses of the games. To better position ourselves to capture these emerging growth opportunities, this year we will spin out The Innovation Games® Company as a separate business entity.

In many ways, these changes reflect the natural evolution and growth of our organization, including the natural growth of Innovation Games®. We’re very excited about 2010, and look forward to serving you as you create breakthrough products and services.

Although we’re nearly done with Q1 2010 I thought it was high time to share with our clients and the world the very exciting new journey we have started this year with some changes to the team, vision and structure of Enthiosys.

Team: Having worked with me since 2004, first as a consultant, then as President of Enthiosys, starting in 2006, Scott Gilbert has been invaluable in growing Enthiosys into the leading Agile Product Management Consulting firm it is today.  After years of helping other companies and teams understand and succeed with Agile, he is going back into a senior product management role where he can practice what he’s been preaching, test out new ideas and move the Agile PM tribe forward.  This fits with the Enthiosys’ core value of being able to speak from experience, not just quote ideas and theories created by others.

Rich Mironov also excelled during his tenure as CMO for the firm. Rich was instrumental in honing our service offerings into a cohesive and coordinated set of engagements, improving our messaging, and providing terrific services to our clients. Rich is returning to his solo consulting practice, where he’ll continue to write Product Bytes, champion agile product management causes and work with Enthiosys on selected projects. On a personal note, I was proud to have Enthiosys sponsor the production and publication of Rich’s book The Art of Product Management. Rich continues to provide product management leadership for the upcoming Product Camp Silicon Valley and the product management stage at Agile 2010 – both of which were started and nurtured through Enthiosys. It is especially gratifying to see the amazing and rapid growth of Product Camps around the world.

I sincerely thank Scott and Rich for all of the help they have provided me and the firm during their time with the company and I wish them both the best in their future endeavors.

I welcome Jason Tanner to the staff as President. Jason spent part of 2008 and all of 2009 in the field serving two of our largest customers helping them transition to Agile practices. Jason lived the transition from a ‘traditional’ product manager to an Agile Product Manager and has leveraged his experiences into quality service to our clients. Jason has embraced Innovation Games® in creative ways to increase collaboration for clients and other groups from the Product Camp RTP to the DFW Scrum Users Group.

Vision: While we will maintain a focus on Agile Product Management, this year we plan to expand our scope to Agile product delivery. In 2009, our customers asked us for more than product management consulting. They desired more complete services to build and start exceptional teams with great product managers and terrific coaches. They asked for assistance with development and testing practices with longer time horizons for continuous improvement. As a result, we broadened our network of senior consultants to provide a targeted combination of services to delight our customers. This subtle and important evolution will continue this year. Our offerings will grow with a new selection of services, training courses and content to address customer needs. You should also expect to see us continue to leverage our partners to increase our ability to deliver a full suite of services. Our vision also include increasing the emphasis on our training offerings.

Structure: We launched online Innovation Games® last year and grew the games team to continue enhancing the platform while increasing adoption of the games. Along the way, we started to notice that our clients and other consultants were using the games to solve a variety of serious problems in areas of sales management & execution and corporate strategy—in themselves novel and exciting uses of the games. To better position ourselves to capture these emerging growth opportunities, this year we will spin out The Innovation Games® Company as a separate business entity.

In many ways, these changes reflect the natural evolution and growth of our organization, including the natural growth of Innovation Games®. We’re very excited about 2010, and look forward to serving you as you create breakthrough products and services.

Trying to change an organization too fast or to too much tends to result in no change it at all. In fact, attempting to transition a company to a new method can cause an organization to go in reverse: it becomes less functional. In an earlier blog, How to Affect Change,I discussed this as the balance of the need for change against the fear of change. Extending these concepts, I want to look at...

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Scrum Alliance Managing Director POSITION DESCRIPTION m/Oppenheim Associates 580 California Street, 5th Floor San Francisco, CA 94104

I'm currently evaluating the result of a project completed before I started working for TUI Nordic. I'm going through objectives documents, requirement lists, budgets, time schedules and business cases trying to find out if the project was a success or not.

Since many of the people have moved on to other projects, it almost feel like I'm doing historic research and that is perhaps a curse of the movern project culture within software development. A project is planned, born, lives but dies when it's completed. Completed projects are almost like old newspapers. They are so dead.

But when I entered this project graveyard, I found myself consumed by these numbers and ideas from the not so distant past. I dug into the numbers, crunching them, comparing, trying to find the answer to my question. I had to stop myself many times, drawing conclusions from incomplete data. Our minds are hard wired to draw conclusions and see patterns, even when there aren't any.

It is all to easy to just take two numbers and draw conclusions, make calculations, etc. In a way it's easier to make these calculations than not to.

So, is the project a success? Well, I've not completed my review but my response will probably be that it depends. It depends on who you ask and which aspect you look at. When we talk about successful projects, it's easy getting stuck in Time, Quality/Features and Cost. But what about learnings? There are always stuff which works less than well in a large project but if you don't see that and act on it so you avoid it in the next project, that must be the greatest failure of all.

It's probably easier just to stick to the numbers and lists, comparing and calculating. But who said one must always pick the easy road?

Camilo Almendra Ana Sofia Maral This talks backlog: Who we are, what we do How we introduce changes How we introduced Scrum Challenges faced Results Lessons learned Open for questions from audience